Drink-drive nurse had visited sick dad

A SHEFFIELD nurse was caught drink-driving following a night trip to visit her ailing father, a court heard.

Paramedics who attended an address in Repton Place, Dronfield Woodhouse, called police after midnight on April 23 to say a woman who had driven there smelled of drink.

Officers were waiting when Helen White left the address in her Hyundai Getz at 1.20am and stopped the car.

She told them she had drunk two glasses of wine and she was arrested after she failed a roadside breath test.

White, of Holyrood Avenue, Lodge Moor, gave a reading of 70mcgs of alcohol in 100mls of breath – double the 35mcgs limit.

White, who works in the accident and emergency department at the Northern General Hospital, admitted drink-driving on April 23 – her third drink-related driving conviction.

She was fined £415, with £85 costs, and banned from driving for 18 months.

The ban will be cut to 14 months if she passes a drink-driving rehabilitation course.

In a letter to the court she said her father suffered from end-stage Alzheimer’s disease while her mother had been admitted to hospital a week before with heart failure. She was struggling to cope and drank some wine.

White told the court: “My parents are coming to the end of their lives and need my help. I know I have made mistakes in the past but I’m not the same person I used to be.